The artist's mother, Ann Watts (1748-1815), daughter of a London cooper, married Golding Constable (see T03901) in 1767. John Constable was the fourth of their six children.

This portrait has usually been dated to the very early
years of the century and this seems consistent with the sitter's age. There is no reference to it in the artist's correspondence. Another version belongs to Colchester Borough Council (repr. Andrew Shirley, John Constable, R.A., 1944, pl.1). Less well painted, less finished (the background no more than stained canvas and the chair very sketchy) and, curiously, in reverse to T03902, this version hardly figures in the modern Constable literature (Hoozee mentions it in his entry on T03902 but doubts its authenticity). The Colchester picture did, nevertheless, come from the Constable family collection (Hugh Golding Constable, sold Sotheby's Dec. 1926, lot 149, bt P.G. Laver) and is painted on a canvas supplied by T. Brown of High Holborn, an artists' colourman certainly used by Constable. If it is a copy of T03902 by someone else, several questions need answering: why would anyone but Constable want to make such a copy, why would they go to the trouble of reversing the design and how did the picture get into the family collection. If, on the other hand, the undoubted crudity of much of the painting could be explained by it being an early work by Constable and also by the present poor condition of the picture (the face, in particular, seems to have suffered), there could be an explanation for the existence of the two portraits, one in reverse to the other. Having painted the portrait of his father, T03901 above, Constable may have decided to complement it with an image of his recently deceased mother, by copying and making more complete a portrait of her which he had painted many years before. Since Golding was already depicted facing to the left, Ann would have to be turned to face right in order to make a pair. Instead of being a copy of T03902, the Colehester picture would by this hypothesis be the original version. Viewed side by side the Tate Gallery portraits of Ann and Golding do not obviously belong to different periods, although the image of Ann looks more archaic. Constable even seems to have made a colour link between the two by echoing the pale olive-grey of Golding's waistcoat or jacket in the background of Ann's portrait, though the olive of her dress may also have suggested some such colour for the background. A more thorough examination of the Colehester picture might throw further light on the problem. For the time being T03902 is given two possible dates here, the traditional early one, c.1800-05, and a somewhat speculative c.1815.